How do officers and their spouses cope with prolonged physical separation?
By Francine Modderno The Foreign Service community now has proportionally more female officers, more tandem couples and more professional wives within its ranks than ever before. In part, this is due to the elimination in 1974 of the requirement that any female FSO resign from the service upon her marriage. But more significantly, these ongoing changes in the makeup of the Foreign Service reflect the happy fact that American women are achieving steadily greater levels of professional responsibility in most fields. These opportunities do not come cost-free, however. More and more Foreign Service families are grappling with the age-old truth that balancing two careers sometimes requires extended periods of physical separation, with one or both partners living, perhaps with children or other relatives, under dangerous physical or political conditions. How do FSOs and their spouses cope with the stresses such separations inevitably create? Are there ways to minimize their impact on marriag
